10 – Learning From The Best

I hope by now you are a little nearer to clarity about who you want to be and how you want to contribute to the world successfully.

Now what?

The best way to continue is to find a role model. Your role model has already done successfully what you would like to do, and you can admire him or her for representing the values and the outcome you are still thriving for.

The process of observing what the best are doing and learning the skills and the personality traits, that got them to their peak performance, is called “modelling”. You have done that when you were a little child. You learned to walk, talk, think and interact with people by observing and imitating your parents.

As a grown-up, you may find it a little harder to learn intuitively from your role model. You are not satisfied by just imitating, you also want to understand why it works.

You may be surprised to find out that peak performers, people who can do something well, often are not able to explain how they are doing it. They are just doing it and don’t have to think about it a great deal. That’s exactly why they are so good at it.

This is why your task of learning the secrets of your role model, at times, can become a little challenging.
It takes a lot of determination, close observation and detailed analysis to find out exactly what it is that makes the real difference for the excellent results of the best.

There are four levels you can attack to accomplish this:

1. Simply imitate the attitudes of your role model as they appear to you. Be an actor and try to copy his or her identity for a while.

2. Analyze what is so good about their outcome. What values does it represent in your opinion?

3. Observe how your role model’s outcome affects other people. Why do people react in a positive way? What would be “the difference that makes the difference”?

4. Closely observe your role model’s actions. What exactly does he or she do — how and in what order — to produce peak results? It is not enough to admire them. You will have to write down your observations, to condense them into your own system, and test and adjust them until your own results come close to what you have seen.

And here is one more important observation: While modelling somebody, you don’t need to and should not give up your own personality. On the contrary, your aim is to incorporate your findings into your own way of being, and therefore to become unique.

Perhaps, one day, you will become somebody else’s role model?

See you in the next lesson.
Love,
Chris Kessel
Personal and Business Coach